Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Reader beware: ghost stories!

Tis the season to be spooky! My friend Kate posted about a paranormal experience she had tonight and it inspired me to share some of my stories. What better time than Halloween, amirite?

I 100% believe in ghosts even and while I've never actually SEEN one, I have sensed them. I'm here today to share a few of those stories and a couple that aren't mine, but are pretty bone-chilling (or at least they chilled my bones!).

The Middle Room

My first personal experience with a feeling of a ghost or entity was at my great-grandma's house, later owned by my parents as an office. It was a lovely two-story house and I felt totally comfortable there, except for one room, the middle room upstairs. It wasn't just me, but everyone in the extended family was freaked out by this room. Nothing happened to me in it, but every time I had to go in there to grab something for my great-grandma, I felt terrified. It felt like somebody or something was watching me. The hair on my arm would stand up and it just felt off. I could never get out of there quick enough! *Shudder* My dad tells a terrifying story about that room -- he says, and I believe him, that when he was little, he had to SLEEP in that room and one night, when everyone else was sleeping but he was still awake, he heard a car pull into the drive and he looked out and saw a long sedan driving in. He just knew that the driver was coming for him. He burrowed under the covers, but he heard the car door close and then the front door open and he heard someone walking up the steps and eventually opened the door. He said a man came into the room, but his face was blurred like it was a black and white tv screen. The man leaned into my dad's face and told him to go to sleep and then he just disappeared into the darkness. He believes this man to be The Sandman. Now, who knows if that story is true, but one thing for sure is that room was creepy.

That Time a Ghost Walked Through Me

During summers in college, I worked with my dad installing security systems and one day, we were headed to a really old mansion in Yellow Springs, OH. He told me that it was sometimes creepy, but he's always telling me stories to freak me out so I took his warning with a grain of salt. However, once we got there I was like yep this is a weird house. A lot of times, my dad would be on one floor and I'd be on the other and we communicated with walkie talkies -- this is when I was the most scared, but as soon as I was back with him, I felt safe. WELL -- we were down in the basement together and all of a sudden, the air turned as cold as winter and I felt something pass through me. It can only be described an an entity, a being. It was colder than cold and I felt it emotionally -- I felt sad and scared and like my heart was literally breaking and then... it was gone. I looked up at my dad and the look on his face said it all - he felt it too! We finished up as fast as possible and ran back to the van! He said that he's experienced that feeling before in the same area of the house but didn't want to tell me because he was afraid I would be too scared.

The Other Creepy House

Dad and I had another creepy experience, but one in which nothing actually happened, but it was more of a feeling. We were installing a security system in a perfectly normal house, except it didn't feel normal. It felt like someone was constantly watching us or like something really bad was hidden from view. One room was full of standing harps, which is odd on it's own, but the entire house was just filled with a bad energy. There were also a bunch of stuffed cats throughout, and they looked like actual cats, like taxoderm-ied cats and it seemed like their eyes followed me, UGH. It was just funky and there's no real way to describe it. Neither of us mentioned it while we were in the house, but once we were gone, we looked at each other and said "that was weird, right?!"

The Ghost on Our Landing

As a kid, I always got a weird feeling on the top landing of our stairs. I would never linger there long and tried to just skip over it by running fast and hopping to the next set of stairs that led to the hallway. Well, one day my mom didn't know I was in the next room and she casually said to my dad, "I think she's gone now." "Who?," replied Dad. "The little girl on the landing, I haven't sensed her in awhile." WTF?!?!?! I didn't ask her about it until later but my mom claims that the ghost of a little girl used to be there and then just disappeared one day. Quite a few people died in our house, as it's very old and it was the only house in the area to remain above water in the great 1913 Piqua Flood. So who knows? I'm just glad that it's gone!

**The next two stories aren't mine, but they are so good that I have to share.**

The Ghost in My Dad's Old Room

When I was little, I always used to sleep in the back room at my grandma's house, my dad's old room. I loved sleeping there since it was his childhood room and the bathroom was right on the other side, so when my grandparents took a shower, I would hear the water running and it was just so soothing. The wallpaper has a beautiful shine to it and the bed is so comfortable. Well, one day, my mom forbid me from sleeping in that room anymore. She said I could spend the night, but I couldn't sleep there. As kids do, I kept pressing her for the reason why I couldn't sleep there and she said it was haunted. Well, that was enough for me as a little kid and so I slept in my aunt's old room instead, but when I got older (11, 12ish), I asked her how did she know it was haunted. She told me that she just had a bad experience there. Of course I kept hounding her and she finally told me the whole story when I was in high school. She claims that one time, in fact one of the first times my dad brought her home to meet his parents, she was sleeping in that room. She woke up one night to a woman with white hair in curlers standing over her bed. She thought it was someone playing a prank on her. Then the woman put her hands around my mom's neck and her hands were as cold as ice. She started choking my mom and wouldn't stop -- my mom struggled and screamed until someone rushed into her room and turned the lights on and then the woman disappeared. WHO KNOWS IF THIS IS TRUE but I have never been comfortable in that room since then.

Mary

Herein lies the story that actually freaks me out the most. So, my cousin Sarah bought a house. It was sold by a man named Walt who had to move into a nursing home after his wife, Mary, died. In the living room, Sarah's 2 cats and dogs would sit and stare at the corner of the room. There was an adjacent bathroom where the light would always flicker or even turn totally off or on- I personally experienced this. Well, this continued for several months. One day, Sarah's nieces were over. They were around 3 or 4 years old and one of them said to Sarah, "Auntie Sarah, who is that lady?" Sarah asked her who she was talking about and she pointed to the same corner that the pets stared at and said "that lady right there in the rocking chair."

From then on, Sarah decided it was Mary sitting in that room and that she was a benevolent ghost. She'd always say "hi, Mary!" when she walked into the room. Well, Walt died a few months later and everything stopped. The lights stopped flickering, the pets stopped paying any attention to the corner. Freaky, right? It's like she was waiting for Walt to join her so that she could be at peace.

The Scary Story That Wasn't

We'll end this post with one of the scariest (and dumbest) moments of my life. Ok so there I was, watching tv in my room, at home on break from college and I was watching this scary af movie with Dakota Fanning and Robert De Niro -- "Hide and Seek," I think it was called. Well, on the screen, a horror scene with blood was playing out and all of a sudden, blood started oozing out of my screen. I screamed bloody murder and my 12 year old sister came rushing in. "THE TV IS BLEEDING," I screamed -- she rationally flipped the lights on and.... the red candle I had been burning on top of the tv pooled and spilled over, dripping wax down the screen.

Some links in this blog are affiliate links. I may earn a commission from products purchased via these links, including but not limited to Amazon links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Opinions are my own.